Conclusion
After his death on August 29, 1970, Ruben Salazar became a martyr for the Chicano movement, which now eulogized him as their hero. Laguna Park, the site of the antiwar moratorium, was renamed Ruben Salazar Park. Murals and paintings by Chicano artists commemorate Salazar as a hero of the people. Parks, libraries, university buildings, scholarships, and housing projects have also been named after him. Corridos , the genre of Mexican folk songs popularized during the Mexican Revolution of 1910, added a new hero to a pantheon that included Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, among others. The corrido by Jesús Sánchez entitled Corrido de Ruben Salazar opens with these lines:
Con intima tristeza
Mis versos voy a cantar
Y perpetuar la memoria
De Don Ruben Salazar.[88]
Yet Salazar's death did more than create a martyr. It silenced an expression of hope that American society would keep its promises. Salazar had still believed that broad social reforms might be possible without pursuing the separatist route urged by some Chicano militants. Committed to his profession, although sympathetic to the movement, Salazar supported more moderate political strategies to achieve basic reforms. "Ruben was a moderate," Thomas concludes. "He would have laughed at being martyrized."[89] Villanueva concurs. According to him, Salazar would have responded to the efforts to canonize him as a movement saint with one of his favorite phrases: "This is ridiculous!"[90]
Sally Salazar also found it curious that the movement transformed her husband into a movement leader when she, like his colleagues, recognized his true identity as a professional journalist. On the tenth anniversary of his death, she wrote, "My memories are confused by the murals and memorials and a creation built in the public mind—someone other
[87] Sally Salazar, "Reporter Salazar the Man, Not the Myth," Los Angeles Times , August 31, 1980.
[88] La Raza (1970), Vol. I, no. 3, 32.
[89] Thomas interview.
[90] Villanueva interview.
people call Ruben Salazar, but someone to this day I don't fully recognize." Sally Salazar believed that the Ruben Salazar whom the movement converted into a martyr "was someone he himself may have just been in the process of discovering." More important for Sally Salazar and her young children, August 29, 1970, meant the tragic loss of a husband and a father. "I don't claim that we were the only persons who knew Ruben," she recalled.
But we knew him very well. He was what a husband and father should be. There's an age children reach when their fathers share more of their time and their selves with them. Our children had reached that age and Ruben had responded.[91]
For Salazar's children, of course, would grow up with only faint memories, if any, of their father. Twenty years after Salazar's death, Lisa Salazar Johnson, his eldest child, who was nine at the time of his death, wrote,
Because I was so young at the time of his death, I fantasized that it was all a mistake and that one day he would be back. In the very short time that I did have my Dad, I remember a happy, funny man who always told us he loved us and had special nicknames for us. He took good care of us, and we shared special times together as a family. It hurts, but I often like to look back at family photos because there on his face it is very clear to see the love he had for us.[92]
Salazar's death removed from the scene the most significant Mexican American journalist of his time. "He was not the first Latino reporter or even the first Latino columnist," his friend and fellow journalist Earl Shorris recalls of Salazar, "but he was the best and the bravest . . . . For one corruscating moment Ruben Salazar gave political and social purpose to Latino media."[93] Salazar was a professional who held to principles of truth and fairness. Bill Drummond noted these qualities in his eulogy to Salazar.
[91] Sally Salazar, "Reporter Salazar." Sally Salazar died on March 11, 1993, of a sudden illness. She had returned to work for the Times as a copy clerk in classifieds in the Times Orange County bureau.
[92] See note by Lisa Salazar Johnson in "August 29." The ages of Salazar's other children at the time of his death were Stephanie Anne, seven, and John Kenneth, five.
[93] Shorris, Latinos , 9, 232. In recognition for his contributions to the Mexican American community through his columns in the Times , in 1971 Salazar was awarded posthumously a special Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
But without a doubt, this man's death had meaning, for he had struggled all these years to stand erect against the pressures of compelling allegiances. And in the end he was true to himself. He made no stale compromise with an authority in which he did not believe. He was neither a pimp for the revolution nor a shill for the Establishment. (Esquire , April 1972)
Perhaps his friend Hank López put it best when he wrote of Salazar's death,
So when the fatal bullet-like missile struck him down in the searing violence of the East Los Angeles riot, instantly killing him as he was covering the story where the action was, we Chicanos suffered a terrible loss—an irreparable loss. He was our only establishment newspaper columnist, the most experienced and articulate Chicano writer in this whole country. Such a loss no community can afford. (Los Angeles Times , September 6, 1970)
Regrettably, Salazar's death did not have an immmediate impact on the Los Angeles Times . It would be some ten years, according to Drummond, before the Times realized it needed to cover the Latino communities in Los Angeles with more than one reporter.[94] Frank del Olmo, the sole Chicano reporter for the Times during the 1970s, notes that because of the efforts of both Bill Thomas, who was then the editor, and Mark Murphy, the new metro editor, additional Latino reporters were hired at the Times by 1980. These reporters represented the best talent the Times could recruit. That talent paid off when the new team of reporters wrote a twenty-seven-part series on southern California's Latino communities that won a Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service in 1984. Although they were a new generation of Chicano reporters, they, according to del Olmo, still looked back to Salazar as a role model. That model was attractive because it "showed you could believe strongly in wanting to help the Chicano community and even be a bit of an advocate for it and still maintain your journalistic integrity."[95]
A full biography of Ruben Salazar will no doubt be written some day. For now, it is my hope that these selections of some of the best of his
[94] Drummond interview.
[95] Interview with Frank del Olmo, December 14, 1993, by Mario T. García. By the 1980s, not only had the Los Angeles Times expanded its staff of Latino correspondents but so too had many other newspapers in the United States, including those in parts of the country where various other Latino groups such as Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, Central Americans, and South Americans resided.
journalism will serve to remind those of us who knew his work how important it was and to introduce him to a new generation for whom he has both historical and current relevance. That relevance stems less from his death than from his work as a journalist. This is the finest tribute Ruben Salazar could receive.
Image not available.
1. Immigrant Identification card of Ruben Salazar,
February 15, 1929. Salazar at 11 months of age.
Courtesy of Lisa Salazar Johnson.
Image not available.
2. Los Angeles Times prize-winning reporters, early 1960s.
Front row: Harry Nelson, Charles Hillinger, Art Berman.
Second row: Ray Hebert and Bill Thomas. At rear: Ruben Salazar.
Courtesy of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
Image not available.
3. Salazar interviewing former president
Dwight D. Eisenhower, early 1960s.
Courtesy of Lisa Salazar Johnson.
Image not available.
4. Salazar with Robert F. Kennedy, early 1960s.
Frank Sinatra in the background.
Courtesy of Lisa Salazar Johnson.
Image not available.
5. Salazar interviewing junta troops in the
Dominican Republic, August 6, 1965.
Courtesy of Special Collections,
University of California, Los Angeles.
Image not available.
6. Salazar interviewing civilians in Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic, August 8, 1965.
Courtesy of Special Collections,
University of California, Los Angeles.
Image not available.
7. Salazar with his children:
Lisa, age 4 (right), Stephanie, age 3 (left),
and Johnny, 6-7 months (center), 1965.
Courtesy of Lisa Salazar Johnson.
Image not available.
8. Salazar in Vietnam, 1965.
Courtesy of Lisa Salazar Johnson.
Image not available.
9. Salazar in Mexico City, 1967 or 1968.
Courtesy of Lisa Salazar Johnson.
Image not available.
10. Salazar greeting Los Angeles Times publisher
Otis Chandler Jr. and Mrs. Chandler at
Mexico City airport, 1967 or 1968.
Courtesy of Lisa Salazar Johnson.
Image not available.
11. Salazar with his wife, Sally Salazar,
Mexico City, Christmas, 1967.
Courtesy of Lisa Salazar Johnson.
Image not available.
12. Salazar at KMEX, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, 1970.
Courtesy of Lisa Salazar Johnson.
Image not available.
13. Chicano Anti-War Moratorium, Los Angeles, August 29, 1970.
Courtesy of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
Image not available.
14. Los Angeles County sheriffs break up Chicano Anti-War Moratorium,
August 29, 1970. Courtesy of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
Image not available.
15. Sheriffs outside of the Silver Dollar Cafe, August 29, 1970.
Courtesy of Raul Ruiz.
Image not available.
16. Sheriffs ordering customers into Silver Dollar Cafe
before shooting into it, August 29, 1970.
Courtesy of Raul Ruiz.
Image not available.
17. Raul Ruiz, editor of La Raza , showing one of his
photographs of sheriffs outside the Silver Dollar Cafe.
Courtesy of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
Image not available.
18. Salazar's body lying in state at an East Los Angeles
mortuary, September 2, 1970.
KMEX manager Danny Villanueva is
standing at the head of the casket.
Courtesy of Special Collections,
University of California, Los Angeles.
Image not available.
19. Chicano school children proudly display copies
of a sketch of Salazar that was drawn by Mexican artist
David Alfaro Siqueiros, early 1970's.
Courtesy of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
Image not available.
20. Memorial to Ruben Salazar, 1988.
Salazar Housing Complex, 1000 Cypress Avenue,
El Paso, Texas. Sponsored by the
Private Industry Council summer youth
employment program under the supervision of
Carlos Callejo. Photo courtesy of Miguel Juárez.